As a boy growing up in the Chituka village in northern Malawi, Kalekeni Banda made mangoes and grapefruits into soccer balls, the game driving him to show up each day for school.

He remembers the time do-gooders handed him a pair of crisp new shoes, which he removed after a few steps because they hurt his toes, swollen from being infested with parasites.

When he last visited the Chituka village in 2008, he witnessed children who, without pencils and notebooks, couldn't go to school. He walked by empty soccer fields, no longer filled with children because play isn't a priority when family members are being ravaged by malaria or HIV/AIDS.

Now, as he approaches age 59, he looks back on his childhood, a time when children sang songs and played soccer with parasite-infested feet, as "the good old days."

Banda, who resigned as coach of the women's soccer team at the University of Albany in 2005, started his Guilderland-based nonprofit Banda Bola Sports Foundation because he knows the needs in his native village, which he left in 1965 for Germany and then the United States. He explains in a baritone still rich with a Malawian accent that he wants to help these children who require notebooks and pencils, soccer balls and second-hand shoes that are already broken in.

He's not Bill Clinton or Madonna, or any of the other charitable people who have looked to help the people of Malawi, but never seem to get far north enough to assist his native village, in one of the country's most needy areas.

He knows that new shoes won't help the child with swollen feet. Having worn the same blue shirt every day of the week as a boy, he knows that one set of clothes won't help the child who gets drenched walking to school in the rainy season but has no way to dry his clothes and no second set of garments to wear.

"Their story is my story because that's where I come from," he says.

There was a time when Banda didn't care about the future of Malawi. His father, once a Malawian diplomat to the United Nations, fell out of favor with the government and was forced to retire early. When Banda returned to Malawi in the late 1970s to coach its Olympic team during a high point in his soccer career, fear of being detained because of the politics led him to leave.

He became disenchanted with his homeland, even though his parents stayed in the Chituka village, where they operated a farm and mentored the other villagers.

When Banda returned to Malawi for his parents' funerals in the 1990s -- his mother died of cancer and his father of a stroke -- he listened to the sing-song cries of villagers wondering who was going to help them now.

And he knew it had to be him.

Outsiders, though they mean well, don't seem to really understand the needs. Without education, generations of Chituka villagers will not know how to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Without the ability to count or read to their little ones, mothers will have no hope of literate children.

Parents die from disease, and the children left behind are passed along to aunts and uncles with limited resources, Banda says. If they can only buy a few notebooks, they'll give to their own children first, and the others won't be able to attend school. And so his foundation must become an extended family, filling the needs that the villagers can't.

He's not aiming for doctoral program graduates -- though that would be a dream -- he just wants an eighth-grade education for all.

He's begun with targeting four primary schools in Chituka, providing school supplies, clothing and personal care items and sports equipment. To tie in with the World Cup, hosted in South Africa this year, he's started a soccer ball drive with the goal of raising 2,500 balls. So far he's got 800 to 1,000 stored in donated warehouse space in Scotia alongside countless other donated items, from sneakers to backpacks.

What a shame, he says, that Africa can celebrate hosting a World Cup, but it can't provide a ball to its children.

Someday, he dreams of restoring the after-school soccer leagues he remembers from childhood to the schools, drawing the children to an education through the temptation of sports.

He's also trying to raise the $5,000 to $9,000 needed just to ship what's collected to the country's remote northern region, and will contact relatives who have roles in the Malawian government to ensure that the donations get to the people they're intended for.

Donations like a well-worn pair of Adidas sneakers. They may not seem like much of a gift, but the Chituka village child who wears them will appreciate the kindness of a person who has already walked a mile or two in his shoes.